Building confidence and trust in sharing personal information

The challenge

The National Police Chiefs Council and the College of Policing are working with the Home Office to meet a commitment for 20,000 additional officers by 2023. Currently, there is a lack of data around the demographic make-up of forces. Our aim is to increase representation across protected characteristics, such as age, gender and disability, so that the 43 forces in England and Wales fully represent the communities they serve and to reduce the number of ‘prefer not to say’ responses.

The solution

We developed fresh and fun branding to underpin our four-stage campaign approach:

  1. 2020 Wave 1 was ‘safe to say’ – building trust and confidence in sharing protected characteristics; knowing who sees the information, what it’s used for and how it’s stored.
  2. 2021 Wave 2 was ‘make your mark’ – covering how sharing information can directly help to shape policing now, and in the future, by informing the development of services and recruitment plans that make a real difference.
  3. 2021/22 Wave 3 was embedding the above messages and creating adapted communications based on feedback received at the end of Wave 2.
  4. 2022/23 Wave 4 is focusing on providing more bespoke support to each force to ensure the messages are embedding and the ‘prefer not to say’ statistics are improving.

The results

The evidence we’ve gathered through focus groups and surveys has shown us that the campaign is having an impact. Following Wave 3 evaluation 77% of forces have rolled-out the campaign and 55% of officers and staff would feel comfortable sharing their protected characteristics compared to 46% at the start of Wave 2. The campaign and its striking assets also grabbed attention outside of policing, with the Fire Service and Probation Service enquiring about the campaign.

“44 Communications has worked alongside us to understand the insight, along with the culture and nuances of communicating across 43 different police forces, which is no easy task. They have been instrumental in setting the strategy, narrative and creative, using regular check ins with forces and attending stakeholder sessions to gather feedback. The brilliant creatives cut across the usual police style and have clearly had an impact.”

Elaine Foster-Searle, Internal Communications Lead, Police Uplift Programme

Why we love it

“Creating the fun assets for this campaign didn’t feel like work! It was so enjoyable collaborating with the forces across England and Wales to find solutions that work for them, developing materials to address their challenges and to fit their channels.”

Jo Williams, Campaign Lead, 44 Communications